This past weekend was the annual Jemez Historic Site Luminaria  Celebration.  Each December for one night only the historic site lights traditional luminarias. 

Some of you might not know what a luminaria is.  It’s a brown paper bag that has sand placed the bottom.  Then a candle is stuck into the sand and lighted.  The effect is very beautiful and synonymous with the southwest holiday season. 

I went with my friend Valerie.  We had gone once before a few years ago but we had some technical difficulties with our equipment that hindered us from getting any decent photos. 

This year we had much better equipment and a lot more skill too!  The event has gotten more and more popular over the years.  Needless to say, we had to buy a ticket this year and it was a lot more crowded. 

Thankfully long exposure photography eliminates moving objects (e.g. people) in your photo. So what is in person a busy event, in photos looks like no one was there. 

My favorite photo of the evening was this one.  I love the lighting and composition of it.  People were walking around with flashlights, taking photos with flash photography and in general just causing all kinds of light.  Which turned out to not be a bad thing!  They essentially did light painting for me.  🙂

Though there was a lot of light around me, I tried getting some shots of the night sky in my photos.  

Here’s a gallery of the other photos I took at the event.  I was pretty pleased with several of my shots.  Just click on one of the images to open a slideshow. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

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